LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY NEW BOOK!

As I've occasionally done every now and again, I'm interrupting my traditional movie blog posts to tell you all that my first book entitled IT'S STRICTLY PERSONAL: A Nostalgic Movie Memoir of 1975-1982 has finally been published. This book vividly chronicles myself as a child of the movies during the eight-year period of 1975 to 1982, when groundbreaking blockbuster motion pictures like JAWS, ROCKY, STAR WARS, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KING, SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, GREASE, SUPERMAN-THE MOVIE, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, and E.T. not only impacted my childhood, but also shaped the man I would one day become. It's a tale of how I felt about the movies then and also how I interpret them now.

I believe that movies constitute an emotional form of time travel that allows us to drift backward and take stock of the different periods of our personal lives, and this is a personal story about the movies told with great memory and affection, for those who still remember and those who will never forget a time when movies were changing, growing, and evolving into deep-rooted memories for every child, teen, and adult who sat in front of the big screen and waited for the magic to unfold.

So, if you're ready to go back in time and remember, then I hope you'll purchase a copy of my new book, now available in softcover and digital formats on Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble.com and iTunesApple.com.

Thank you all for your support. It is sincerely appreciated.

TERROR BY NIGHT

(February 1946, U.S.)

This may be one of the shortest blog posts that I write because, quite frankly, how much can you possibly write about a film that's only sixty minutes long? In case you've never heard of this crime drama noir, it's one of the many Sherlock Holmes films made with Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as his sidekick Dr. Watson; one of four Holmes films that have fallen into the public domain over the years, which means you can often purchase these movies on a bargain-priced DVD.

This film revolves around the theft of the famous and valuable Star of Rhodesia diamond aboard a train which is transporting a coffin to Scotland. On board are various suspicious characters that will remind you of the sort of mystery setting frequently used by Agatha Christie, particularly MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS. Sherlock Holmes, on board to protect the diamond, is soon involved in murder when the son of Lady Margaret, the owner of the diamond, is found dead and the diamond stolen. In the traditional fashion, questions are asked and various suspicions are investigated. We learn that the notorious jewel thief Colonel Sebastian Moran may be on board the train. By the time additional bodies start to pile up and it all comes to a conclusion, we've learned of the mysterious compartment inside the coffin, the truth behind the diamond and it's fake counterpart, and of course, the identity of the true murder and his accomplices playing the part of police inspectors who attempt to remove the guilty man from the train before Holmes can have him arrested. Holmes, being Holmes and elementary and all that, solves the crime and brings the true criminal to justice, just as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle intended, and just as we watch it all happen in just sixty minutes.

While I haven't seen all of the Sherlock Holmes films that Rathbone and Bruce made together, this is one of the more thrilling ones I've seen if for no other reason than thrillers often take on a more intense and exciting approach when they're on board a fast moving train. Perhaps this is why I (and many others like me) look forward to those moments in James Bond films like FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, LIVE AND LET DIE and THE SPY WHO LOVED ME when we get to see Bond in action on board a speeding train and usually gets the girl just where he wants her inside one of those folding beds (hey, it worked for Cary Grant, too, in Hitchcock's NORTH BY NORTHWEST). Holmes is a classic literary character that Nigel Rathbone seems to have a solid command on (a lot better than an American like Robert Downey Jr. ever could!), while Nigel Bruce often comes off as nothing more than an overweight comic relief (perhaps he's the reason I've never truly embraced Hitchcock's SUSPICION). If absolutely nothing else, I've found that these classic black and white Sherlock Holmes films, with their public domain grainy texture, are great for very late night movie watching when you're looking for something that will help you fall asleep. It worked last night!

I told you this would be short!

Favorite line or dialogue:

Sherlock Holmes: "Did you discover anything, Watson?"
Dr. Watson: "Yes. He's a very suspicious character. He tried to put me off the scent."
Holmes: "From the little I heard, he seemed reasonably successful."

TERMS OF ENDEARMENT

(November 1983, U.S.)

As a kid in the 1980s, ever since my tenth grade class trip to see GANDHI at New York City’s Ziegfeld Theatre in 1982, I’d been looking for opportunities to expose myself to more serious adult drama on screen. Perhaps this longing I had to occasionally break away from the traditional teenage fare of action, adventure and comedy was a sign of my growing up a little more. Yet for James L. Brooks's TERMS OF ENDEARMENT, I chose to keep my interests to myself. These interests at the time stemmed from nothing other than my fond memory of recently watching Debra Winger in AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN when it premiered on HBO. When it played in my town, I didn’t bother asking any of my friends if they wanted to go see it with me. At sixteen, even before I knew what a "chick flick" really was, I somehow felt that wanting to see a movie about a mother and her daughter would pass me off as feminine somehow and I didn’t want to take a chance that it would make me the subject of ridicule at school. Sure, there was always the possibility that someone I knew would see me at the local movie theater, but I guess I chose to ignore that and take my chances.

Because I was a still a boy (and sometimes I still act like one), I had no concept of the relationships between a mother and her daughter. Still, when a movie begins with a mother so worried about her infant dying in her sleep and easing her fears by waking up the baby instead, taking comfort in her crying, you know you’re probably in for some interesting exposure to the world of adults beyond the traditional romantic comedy. Aurora Greenway (played by Shirley MacLaine) and her daughter Emma (played by Debra Winger) clearly love each other, but their moments of conflict are astounding. I honestly never know how to feel when Aurora tells Emma the night before her wedding that she's likely making the biggest mistake of her life by marrying Flap (played by Jeff Daniels). On the one hand, I can understand her absolute honesty toward protecting her daughter’s future. On the other hand, I can also hear myself asking, "Who does this to her daughter the night before her wedding?" Conflict, indeed.

The film continues through many years of Emma’s life with Flap and their three children. Life is often difficult because they're always broke. The scene in the supermarket when Emma doesn’t have enough money to pay for her food actually still gives me a small lump in my stomach because the mere thought of such a humiliation in public is enough to reach me on an emotional level. Still, even though Emma struggles with her cheating husband and her own affair with an older man from the local town bank (played by John Lithgow), her relationship with her mother improves, giving her reason to occasionally find joy in her life. I can still remember the smile on my face when I first watched mother and daughter on the bed together and talking, Aurora declaring that even late in her life, she discovered that sex was "so fan-fucking-tastic", as she put it.
Aurora’s relationship with Jack Nicholson is intriguing for me. First of all, it's JACK, and he's always a sight. TERMS OF ENDEARMENT was the first time I saw him on screen since THE SHINING, but I’d also watched in him in parts of ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST on TV. His character in this film never seems to be serious about anything for even a moment, but one can tell he has a heart for kindness and love, given the time. The scene where he drives his sports car into the water is wild and crazy and I simply love his sort of insanity. Again, this is what makes Jack...well, Jack.

Soon the film hits us with an unexpected shock. Back in 1983, during a time when social media didn’t exist and one often didn’t have to worry about movie spoilers that didn’t involve Darth Vader being Luke’s father and Spock dying, it was a shock to learn when Emma was diagnosed with terminal cancer. I can still remember hearing myself ask, "Why are you doing this to me?" We've followed along with Emma, her mother, her silly husband and all of her life’s mishaps this entire time and we haven’t complained once. Now you’re hitting us with her death?? How can this film and Hollywood be so damn unfair to us? When Emma finally dies, I won’t tell you that I cry (because I never cry at the movies, not even as a kid), but one can't help but walk away from TERMS OF ENDEARMENT with a newfound sense of curiosity and astonishment at the adult world through the eyes of the movies. Life is often unfair. Life can spend its entire time hitting you, knocking you down and testing your limits, and in the end, finally take it from you. As a teenager, when I first saw the film, it was the first time I was realizing that, like or not, bad things happened to good people. I still remember riding home on my bicycle, thinking to myself that it would be better never to tell any of my friends that I’d watched TERMS OF ENDEARMENT and loved it. Not only did I not want to take the chance of being ridiculed, but I think I also wanted to keep my feelings and emotions toward this tearjerker with its wonderful combination of humor and heartbreak to myself...that is, until I’ve written them now in this blog post.

In the summer of 1989, I was dating a girl younger than myself whom I shall call Caren L. (she’s briefly mentioned in my post blog for DEAD POET'S SOCIETY). When she was seventeen years-old, she learned that her mother was terminally ill with cancer (she died three years later). During one of our weekends together, we chose to stay in on a Saturday night and she told me she wanted to watch my videotaped copy of TERMS OF ENDEARMENT. I asked her why, knowing full well how the film ended and that it would make her very sad to watch. She told me that it was her way of accepting her mom’s illness and somehow coming to terms (no pun intended) with it. At the time, I may not have fully understood her rationale and reasoning, but today I realize it’s just another way that movies speak to us and reach some of us on an emotional level that others may not always understand. I understand.

TERMS OF ENDEARMENT won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1983.

Favorite line or dialogue:

Aurora Greenway: "What's wrong with you?"
Emma Greenway-Horton: "I got some good news."
Aurora: "What's that?"
Emma: "I'm unofficially pregnant. We haven't gotten the tests back yet, but you know me, I'm never late."
Aurora: "Well...I don't understand."
Emma: "If you're not happy for me, I'll get so mad if you're not happy."
Aurora: "Why should I be happy about being a grandmother??!!"
Flap Horton: "Does this mean you won't be knitting the baby any booties?"

TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY

(July 1991, U.S.)

A sequel to THE TERMINATOR (1984) was a total shock to me. For starters, I saw no conceivable way for the story of James Cameron's fantastic sci-fi-action thriller to continue. I mean, the Terminator was destroyed, Sarah Connor's unborn child was going to live and it looked like mankind's future had been saved from destruction and war. Furthermore, there was no internet or social media back in 1991. At best, if you wanted to keep up with what was new and exciting in the world of entertainment, you had to watch ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT on CBS, which I didn't. So when I saw a full page ad of Arnold Schwarzenegger riding a motorcycle and carrying a rifle in the New York Times Arts & Leisure section advertising the new sequel, my immediate reaction was, "When the hell did this happen?" I was skeptical, of course. But when I noticed that it was also directed by Cameron, who by now, had thrilled the world since THE TERMINATOR with ALIENS, I figured that, perhaps, it would be worth a look.

Worth a look? If ever there were three more understated words in the English language when pertaining to movie, these were it! From the moment the movie opened with a spectacular, futuristic war taking place on the grounds of Los Angeles in the year 2029, I was hooked. In fact, when I saw this awesome shot on the big screen in front of me...

...my immediate wonder was if they sold a poster in stores of this exact image. Oh, how great this would have looked on my college dorm wall (today, it would simply make a great computer screen saver).

The time is the not-too-distant future when John Connor (played by Edward Furlong) is now ten years-old (ten? Looks more like twelve to me), so figure the year is 1995. John is a troubled and delinquent kid living with foster parents because his own mother Sarah Connor (played again by Linda Hamilton) got herself locked up in a mental institution when she tried to blow up a computer lab while preparing her son for his future role as the leader of the Human Resistance against Skynet, the artificial intelligence entity with control over the United States nuclear missiles and the initiator of the nuclear holocaust called "Judgment Day" that Sarah already knows will take place on August 29, 1997. Of course, she's considered insane and no one will believe her prophecies, including her own son.

Like the first movie, Skynet of the future sends another Terminator (played by Robert Patrick), the advances T-1000 prototype comprised of liquid metal, back in time to kill John as a child. This new Terminator coincides well with the new CGI moviemaking of the 1990s because it has the awesome ability to take on the shape and appearance of just about anything and anyone it touches, including the power to transform its arms into knives and other stabbing weapons. Arnold, this time, plays the Terminator charged with protecting young John Connor, programmed and sent back in time by John himself in the future. Together, John and the Terminator break Sarah out of her imprisonment and head for the road in order to escape the authorities and prevent "Judgment Day". While the T-1000 is constantly in pursuit, the action is hardcore and easily outsoars everything we were treated to back in 1984.

Along the way, we learn about our own future in a world where scientists and technicians of Skynet retrieved the mechanical CPU arm and computer chip of the first Terminator and used it to advance our technology that would inevitably lead us all to our "Judgment Day". But with the horrifying knowledge of the future also comes the power to potentially change it. In their race against time, Sarah, John, the Terminator and the man most responsible for our future, Miles Bennett Dyson (played by Joe Morton) are out to destroy everything (including the T-1000) that Skynet can use to destroy us. After some intense battle and combat action inside a steel mill, the T-1000 is destroyed in a vat of molten steel (sorry for the spoiler!) and the future appears saved, or at least it will be after the hero Terminator of the movie destroys itself, as well. Our lives can now feel a sense of hope...at least until they make three more damn TERMINATOR sequels!

Let me say right off the bat that TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY is still my favorite action movie of all time. Despite all the films of franchises like James Bond, STAR WARS, DIE HARD and the countless comic book superhero movies that have bombarded us since Tim Burton's BATMAN (1989), it's still James Cameron's hardcore version of what might become of our future in a world where machines think more and human beings think less that continues to take my breath away even after twenty-eight years. T2's thrilling and carefully staged action sequences and awesome, eye-popping visual effects are nothing short of a landmark achievement in the what was the future of filmmaking back in the early '90s. But more than action, there's an effective human quality to the film that also includes the depth of the cyborg characters. As the savior of the human race, it's Arnold (despite his lack of credibility as a true actor, in my opinion) as the machine, who while constantly learning about the human condition, realizes the importance and value of life. T2 inaugurates a new decade before the end of the century immediately following an era when action was simply limited to the mindless thunder and high-voltage of men like Chuck Norris and Sylvester Stallone. Perhaps we, like Cameron, were getting smarter and more discriminating about what we called good entertainment on the big screen. If we were, it certainly didn't last too long. Still, I'll take the legendary history of TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY for everything it gave me when I was younger and everything it continues to give me today...on high definition Blu-Ray!

Thank you, James! Keep the great movies coming!

Favorite line or dialogue:

Sarah Connor (voice-over): "The unknown future rolls toward us. I face it for the first time with a sense of hope. Because if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too."

It would seem that we can't!

TERMINATOR, THE

(October 1984, U.S.)

This is the story of my first seeing James Cameron's THE TERMINATOR back in 1984. Once upon a time..

That summer, when I went to see the Gene Wilder comedy THE WOMAN IN RED with my family, I also got to see the trailer for THE TERMINATOR (that was probably the better part of that movie experience). By this time, I was a soon-to-be-senior in high school, and like all others in my grade, we were practically stars at the top of our game (a year from now we’d be in college and right back at the bottom again). As young men, when we weren’t enjoying the pleasure of beer and girls at parties, we were enjoying the freedom of movies when we wanted and as late as we wanted. To finally be at an age when we could take in the last show of the night and come home very late without parental issues was just another step toward adult freedom. The bigger the movies, the better. The badder the movies, the better. Arnold Schwarzenegger playing an assassin cyborg was big and it was bad, and my friends and I couldn’t wait to see it (actually, it turned out to be just me and one friend, but that didn’t ruin anything because he was just as pumped as I was, and that sort of enthusiasm for a movie always helps the experience).

The movie poster’s tagline seemed to say it all. The present and the future, a killing machine that felt no pity, no pain and no fear. Having seen the trailers, I already had a pretty good idea of what I was in for. A tale of time travel in which Arnold as “the Terminator” goes back in time from the future to our present day of 1984 to kill a young woman named Sarah Connor and her unborn son who will one day become the leader of the resistance against the machines that have taken over our society in the future. A soldier from that same doomed future was sent back as well to protect Sarah from the terminator. From the moment the opening credits began, I was hooked. Not so much in the credits themselves, but rather in the way the movie title was forming from side to side and meeting in the middle. Like SUPERMAN-THE MOVIE when I was a kid, I was enjoying a great combination of credits and powerful music.

Not since BLADE RUNNER was I challenged with such a high concept in science fiction storytelling. This was my first Schwarzenegger movie since CONAN THE BARBARIAN and he seemed perfectly built for a role of a mindless machine who said very little. Perhaps that wasn’t saying too much for the man as an actor, but it seemed to be working, nonetheless. One of the first story elements of the movie I was impressed with was the Terminator’s systematic killing of every Sarah Connor he found in the Los Angeles phone book in order to be thorough in his mission. Impressive, yet scary, just the same. The Sarah Connor (played by Linda Hamilton) he was really looking became terrified when she heard about the other ladies. The moment when she was almost killed in the dance club put a knot in my stomach because I couldn’t take my eyes of the red laser dot at the center of her forehead. Sure, I fully expected her to be saved because that’s what happens in the movies, but it was the notion of staring death in the face like that knowing that your killer absolutely would not miss that got to me. Her savior, the warrior and protector from the future, Kyle Reese (played by Michael Biehn), stopped the Terminator with his own firearm, but only momentarily. We needed to remember that the killer wasn’t a man, and would just stand up again and resume his hunt. Despite my preview understanding of what was taking place, Kyle’s explanation to Sarah was not only helpful, but entertaining to listen to. This wasn’t just a simple matter of the hunter and the hunted. This was a tale of an artificial intelligence defense network run by a corporation known as Skynet. In the future, machines controlling our nuclear weapons would become self-aware and launch a nuclear holocaust. Survivors would be enslaved and ruled by the artificial intelligent machines. Sarah’s future son, John Connor, would rise up and teach his people to fight against Skynet and its army of machines. With victory nearly won, the Terminator was sent back to change history and prevent the eventual resistance. Like I said, it was high concept and I was loving every bit of it.

As Sarah and Kyle continued to elude the Terminator and the police, they were (predictably) falling in love, too. During the explosive climax, I learned a new concept in surprise endings. First when we thought the Terminator was destroyed in an explosion, he rose again (without his human skin now) to complete his mission of killing his victims. When we thought he was destroyed again with the hydraulic press, what was left of him kept on coming to finish off Sarah once and-for-all. I knew of the concept of the ending that wasn’t quite the ending from the conclusion of ALIEN, but this was the first time I ever saw it happen more than once. Even when the Terminator was finally destroyed for good, the concept of "just when you thought it was over" still came back for one more round. Months later, Sarah was pregnant and driving through Mexico, making tape recordings for her unborn son. It was clear that Kyle was the father of her future son. High concept took a turn now into theories of time travel that I didn’t fully understand. I mean, if Kyle is John Connor’s father, and it was John who sent Kyle back in time in the first place, does any of what we just watched on screen ever really take place if Kyle didn’t even survive the year 1984? I left the movie puzzled, but I hardly cared. THE TERMINATOR was and still is one of the best action, sci-fi movies I’ve ever seen!

It’s unfortunate, however, that like so many other movie franchises that start off with high profile glory, the story of the THE TERMINATOR eventually fizzles out into too many overdone and overblown sequels, beginning with the third film of 2003. It’s fortunate, though, that I can clear my mind of all unnecessary film installments and remember just how good and original James Cameron’s vision of a dystopian future really is. It’s storytelling and performances are compelling and continues a trend in tech-noir filmmaking that began with Ridley Scott and BLADE RUNNER. As a special effects thriller, it’s not without its necessary gory treats, either. Right from the beginning of the film, the action and violence are given to us with a strong sense of suspense and tension while setting up the story at the right pace. Like a Dirty Harry movie meets THE ROAD WARRIOR meets grindhouse schlock, it’s high-powered guns blazing with apocalyptic science fiction and brutal horror blended in for good measure.

But even as we’re taking in all the action and fun, one cannot ignore the fascist statement behind the story and our possible future. Even in the 1980s, an era before the internet, the smart phone and social media, James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd recognized the dangers of computer technology and society’s dependence on the machines that govern our lives. If Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and Disney’s TRON were merely light-hearted insights to human being’s relationship with artificial intelligence, then THE TERMINATOR (and its totally awesome 1991 sequel) reminds us that we’d better be damn careful about the direction we’re headed toward, and to be prepared for the destructive consequences we face if we’re not.

And they lived happily ever after...maybe.

Favorite line or dialogue:

Kyle Reese: "Listen, and understand! That Terminator is out there! It can't be bargained with! It can't be reasoned with! It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear...and it absolutely will not stop...ever...until you are dead!"

TEN COMMANDMENTS, THE (1956)

(November 1956, U.S.)

I was born Jewish. Beyond that, I have absolutely no Jewish practices, beliefs or traditions of my own, not even a single day spent in Hebrew school. I'm also an atheist. In fact, throughout my adult life, I've had an ongoing joke that everything I learned about Judaism, I learned from actor Charlton Heston and director Cecil B. DeMille. Believe it or not, most people who aren't familiar enough with the history of Cecil B.'s epic motion picture THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (a remake of his own 1923 silent film of the same name) don't get the joke. But I suppose when considering the film, it's impossible to say that I grew up without any Jewish traditions. The annual airing of THE TEN COMMANDMENTS on ABC-TV every spring was not only a motion picture tradition, but it also coincided with the annual Jewish holiday tradition of Passover, which was celebrated every year at my grandparent's home when I was a kid and then subsequently at my aunt and uncle's home when I got older. It was a time of family gathering while surrounded by some of the most delectable food I've ever known...times I've never forgotten to this day. In fact, I still remember that it was the year 1978 or 1979 when THE TEN COMMANDMENTS aired on a Sunday night that was the first night of Passover. I can still picture myself and all my cousins gathered around my grandparent's huge color TV set in their basement, refusing to budge from our seats, even when dinner was ready and food would be served. It seems we were all that committed to holding onto the moment when we could all share this film tradition together.

As for the film itself, the annual viewing tradition didn't exactly come natural to me. Let's face it, without any formal Jewish training beyond the annual stories at the family Passover Seder table, I practically knew nothing of the film or what it was really about. Yet somehow, I knew it was important for me to watch it every year (or at least as much of it as I could watch on a school night. I mean this movie was damn near five hours long with commercials!). I also knew that while I was watching it, every one of my first cousins were gathered around their own television sets to watch the annual biblical story of the life of Moses (played by Heston), the adopted Egyptian prince who, according to prophecy, becomes the deliverer who would lead the enslaved Hebrews out of slavery in their Exodus to Mount Sinai, where Moses receives God's Ten Commandments. For the purpose of this blog post, that's probably enough of a plot description. Anyone who is Jewish, or at least is familiar with the Old Testament, likely knows the rest of the story.

But how does someone like me come to fully appreciate THE TEN COMMANDMENTS without any of his own beliefs in the biblical traditions that surround it? The only answer is to approach the story as a purely Hollywood motion picture epic and nothing else. But even that's not without its challenges. For nearly four hours (that's the running time on DVD without commercials), the dialogue is almost completely and purely biblical, leaving very little room for traditional and conventional Hollywood dialogue, not too unlike watching Shakespeare. And just how accurate is the film's content? How much does it diverge from the original biblical text? Did the very first Passover Seder (or last supper, really) on the eve of the great Exodus really serve unleavened bread before the Hebrews were even leaving Egypt? Questions from Moses's nephew in that sequence would suggest yes, but watch the scene closely and you'll see Moses and his family tearing and eating what appears to be Pita bread, and that bread is leavened. I suppose those with faith can use their own personal judgement and beliefs between what is true and what is pure Hollywood. Those like myself can only accept what the director claims to be content directly taken from the Old Testament, the Holy Scriptures and consultation from a rabbi or two involved with the making of the film. I can't also forget my childhood and just how epic I considered this motion picture to be, in particular the special effects for its time. I'm sure my cousins and I were enthralled every year when we watched Heston spread his arms out, declare "Behold His mighty hand!" and watch the Red Sea part with impressive effects that would someday lead to modern computer-generated imagery (CGI)...

As an adult and a personal critic of cinema, I look at THE TEN COMMANDMENTS for all of its visual spectacle and glory. The settings, facades and décor of the great Egyptian cities are overwhelming, particularly in their vivid, glowing Technicolor. This is clearly a new and improved project from his original black and white silent film that is close to DeMille's heart. The photographic scenes of the deserts, the mountains and the sea are a breathtaking wonder. The thousands of Hebrew slaves conjugated in bitter bondage and joyous exodus is visually striking. Charlton Heston commands the role of Moses with a persona that practically convinces his audience that he's not only one with whichever God he chooses to believe in, but also with the sworn enemy of Yul Brenner's Pharoh, who holds Moses's people in chains. We also can't ignore the outstanding performances (though terribly biblical that they are) of supporting cast members as Anne Baxter, John Derek (future husband of Bo), Yvonne De Carlo (future Mrs. Herman Munster) and the great Edward G. Robinson (he was Jewish) as a treacherous and diabolical Jewish overlord.

Despite my lack of Jewish upbringing and beliefs, I still enjoy watching THE TEN COMMANDMENTS every year or two around the time of Passover. Gone, however, is the commitment to sitting in front of the TV so ABC can take up five hours of my time with its pointless commercials. That ritual has long been replaced by two high-definition discs that look amazing. Those like my first cousin Alan still cling to the annual television tradition because it's a reminder of all that was good about his childhood, and for that, I can only commend his nostalgia and sentimentalism. I've forever declared that movies define our lives; who we were and who we are today. Alan's attitude only drives that point home.

Finally, for years, I've occasionally dedicated these blog posts to specific people for specific reasons having to do with the films I write about. For this post, I dedicate it to my Uncle Henry. For years, I and my family enjoyed the wonderful company and the wonderful food of his Passover Seder table. However, for the past six years, there has been an interruption in that tradition. The reasons are not important to my readers now, but on this brand new day of the brand new year, I declare that this interruption must end now...and it will end this coming spring because it's time for it to end.

Now it is written...so let it be done...because I say so!

Favorite line or dialogue:

Moses: "A city is made of brick, Pharaoh. The strong make many. The weak make few. The dead make none. So much for accusations."